It probably was his time, but he sure was happy with the consistency of E85 and how little the temps climbed in the heat. We have a little more tuning, idle and transition fuel is a little lean. I pushed his a little leaner than mine, to try to find the limit. I also ran a log against the converter in my dragster to compare to my carb, it required a little more jet than mine, .140 to .144. I realized later that my banjos are .950 skirts, and remembered I had to get .940's for his as BLP was out of .950's at the time, mine also has my slotted boosters and his are 16 hole. The combination changed the overall main restriction, and thus the need for more jet. We hope to dial it in a little more on Thursday, once I get a final tune I'll post the specs.

Just a quick update, not much new going on here. Rain has dampened (pun intended ) our racing here more recently, between rain, work, and lightning taking out my wife's graphics computer I have had little time to mess with the race car. I will run my brother's 1250 in tomorrow hopefully to make sure it's close for AFR's WOT on the converter, I have an RS Demon I hope to do a quick check on as well. I will post specs when I get finished with them, as always these are starting points that will give everyone a safe calibration to start with. Tune as needed from there. We (Bruce/nomad and I) will be dyno testing some E85 combo's this week, it will allow us to hone in a little closer and confirm what I've done to this point. I also broke down and bought a booster installation tool, to allow me to set up 4150's as well. I picked up some Braswell style 4150 downleg boosters with a .180 passage, they should work fine for anything 750 and up. I'll be happy to help anyone needing boosters installed, but with the cost of shipping these days if you have someone local that is capable you will probably be better off doing it there.

After that my attention will be on gas carbs for the upcoming carb challenge, I'm entered in both classes. I will likely use one of the Dominators we have currently for the small engine, even though they say 4150 any carb is legal, and I think a 1050 or thereabout will do the best job. For the big engine, I'll have a billet body made by BLP as a base, going to be something over 2.400" throttle bore...

Good day of testing, we only made one pull on E85 but out of the box the calibration in the RS Demon was just about ideal. The engine picked up right at 10 HP average from 4000 to 7500 RPM, and the fuel curve looked really good. For a 4150, any blocks used for our 2 circuit Dominators will work fine with a slightly larger angle channel, these are a .175. .024 e-bleeds in #1 and #3 of 5 and a .026 kill. Booster passage is .180, jets are .130, might be a tad rich. We will do some more pulls on Thursday including my 1050, but so far a satisfying day. Once all is compiled maybe I can get Bruce to post the dyno sheets and O2 logs.

It was a fun time for sure. Learnt a few things. We're due to go back on Thursday night and build on that.

This was the dyno owner's first experience with E-85. It sure was stinky in there. We made four pulls to optimise the existing shop gas 850 to get a good baseline. Then came the E-85 pull. Without dragging out the printout I can tell you that the motor made over 500HP from 6500 to 7700 RPM. The average HP was up 10.2 with the carb change only (no other tuning changes). The peak HP was the same though, 529. This is a 358 with home ported Dart iron casting.

I'm currently experiencing problems with my own website so I'm not sure if I'll be successful in posting the dyno sheets there.

Well after fighting some dyno electronic gremlins we did manage to make a few pulls on Thursday. We managed to get to 126/127 jets (didn't have a matched pair but will have on Tuesday) on the Demon and pick up a few average HP. We then made a couple pulls with my 1050, on gas the little engine made more with a Dominator than a 4150 but on E85 it was down. Lambda was rich. We jetted from 140's to 134's and picked up to what the Demon was making, but it still looked rich. We ran out of time, we will go back Tuesday, but after putting the carb back on my car it's probably .02-.03 quicker than before and MPH came up. I've had a lot going on between work, rain, and electrical issues with the car and have not had time to mess with it until now. A .134 jet is in the range of a 102-103 Holley jet so I think I'm close, and some adjusting to fatten the idle and transition circuit metering has improved idle quality on it as well. I think I can go down a little more on jet, but the car ran a 5.35, a 5.34, three 5.33's in a row, and then the 60' lost .02 and dumping the top when I couldn't catch the other guy netted a 5.36 loss. Consistency and performance has come around with the jet change, something I've been chasing since taking off the 1150. I think I can go down a little more, and looking at the O2 readings on the Innovate used on the dyno and the Racepak on my car the Racepak shows leaner than it really is. I attribute this to the fact that my O2's are in the collector of an open exhaust and a cam on a 108 LSA that probably pulls a little air back in to dilute it. Once we get the jetting correct I will make a log on my Racepak to compare to the dyno, as long as we are close on jets needed for the dyno engine and mine it will give me a Lambda # to look for on the car with E85.

I'm sure you probably already know this but dyno's stand still. Cars move and air comes in a scoop and we all know what that can do. Not saying that this is a problem, just reminding you that the dyno and a car are two completely different animals and most times what works standing still does NOT work on the race track.

But I've been reading this as it goes along and it sounds like you guys are sneaking up on a good base line tuneup.

looking at the O2 readings on the Innovate used on the dyno and the Racepak on my car the Racepak shows leaner than it really is. I attribute this to the fact that my O2's are in the collector of an open exhaust and a cam on a 108 LSA that probably pulls a little air back in to dilute it.

You guys are going well with the project. I doubt your reason for the difference between the two wideband systems. I wouldn't be at all concerned that one reads different to the other. Its probably more likely that both are not correct. If your interested to find out, this is what you do. Once the engine is performing at its best (you will know that because the power change will start to vary less per tuning change (sort of like it will plateau and you will see yourself in a zone) ) make a one size main jet change richer and observe what the WB reads. The WB's should respond with a percentage change in AFR equal to the jetting area percentage change.

Then you can also do this test. Just retard the ignition enough degrees to kill off about 30 hp, maybe 4 degrees should do it and the WB's will probably read it as if you changed the jets. What this all means is your searching for the WB that's following the CO. During the normal course of your tuning for power close the plug gaps up and dont change anything else and see if the WB reads richer or the power goes up maybe. What your doing then is checking if the ignition is kicking the flame kernel hard enough. A really small gap will have a weak kernel and the engine will make CO and the WB will follow that. So you can then get an understanding of the most important gas produced in tuning. Of course its better to have a gas bench but you can make do this way.

The reason why I say CO is the most important is because its the first stage of carbon utilization. How much of it depends upon the amount richer than stoich you are AND the homogenization of the charge. Many books are written that do not take into account the full picture of CO. Basically any time your richer than stoich you must make CO its going to be impossible (unless you do something stupid and make soot) to have zero of it because there is a lack of O's to go around. If you have very good vaporization and homogenization then the CO level will be quite high for the amount richer than stoich you are. If you use a gas bench you can see the relationship of CO to HC and you can see if the vaporization changes. As the vaporization and homogenization improves the CO goes up and the HC goes down and the O2 consumption goes up and the CO2 goes down and the NOx goes virtually non existent. The engine makes the same or more power but its doesnt get hot or contaminate the oil or wear any part of it out over thousand and thousands of miles thrashing it. And you can lean it off and it will come back to making the same amounts of CO and CO2 as when it had poor atomization but was richer, so it will use far less fuel producing the same cylinder pressures. The WB's do follow the CO more than they follow the HC because CO is the easiest carbon inclusive gas to react. So which ever sensor system follows the CO best is the one to use to sort of gain some interpretation of this gas without having a gas bench. Now days I know when an engine is making heaps of CO by how it sounds and what the WB is doing.

Variations of this technique is also how you figure out if the fuel is right for the engine but its a lot easier with a gas bench. A cheap valuable addition to any tuner's box is an old fashioned CO meter. There not the best for racing because they are so slow at reading but there fine for street tuners or steady state dyno work. At least they tell you the CO. A WB and a CO meter is all you need as a beginner.

I'm not as concerned about what the wideband reads, no matter what the reason for the difference, I'm more interested in what should be a close reading on my car compared to the Innovate on the dyno. My interest is for baseline purposes, not an absolute to go by. One thing I saw some time ago was that when the timing is optimized the O2 logs look smooth and flat, with no changes to the carb moving the timing outside ideal makes the O2 look erratic. Looking at what we have done I think we are real close. The Demon on E85 has a really flat and smooth log, Bruce made the comment it was the smoothest log he has seen from any carb. We go back on Tuesday to try and wrap up the 1050 tune, and mess with the 850 and some different metering blocks. I think the 11180 cast blocks we use on the 2 circuit Dominators can be used on a 4150 on E85 to save a little change for those not wanting to spend the extra on billet blocks, and all that is needed is to move the idle feeds down to the bottom and open the angle channels to around .175. Booster passage at .180 worked well on the Demon, the 850 Holley has .176 booster's and we plan to try just changing metering blocks to see how it works. Not sure why the 850's had that large of a booster passage on gas, may be one reason 850's had a bad rap. I also have some .180 Braswell boosters to try when we get a 4150 to convert (looking for a Guinea Pig) they have a radius flared exit taper unlike the Holley, the Demons have a tapered chamfer at the bottom I would guess to have a similar effect.

As far as Tony, the gentleman we converted to start the thread, ran 6.58 (traction off) and 6.56 for time runs, a 6.55, a 6.58 on the brakes, another 6.55, two 6.54's, and a 6.53 in the final last night. He lost with a red light, but can't be any happier with the way his car runs. When you can predict what the car is going to do it makes things a whole lot easier. I went out second round, gave away what would have been a dead on run had I stayed in it. I should have trusted it to stay in it, an would have won the round.

Last, we did see the humidity go from the low 50's to the low 70's but with a temp drop as well, didn't seem to make a difference. Might be because we are still on the rich side, we will have to keep an eye on how it affects us with E85.

Fair enough on your interests, but considering them, wouldn't it be better to run the Racepak on the dyno because your never going to get the Innovate and the racepak to agree. My experience is Ive never taken an engine from a dyno and found it unnecessary to retune it in the car. So with that in mind I'd want at least the same WB system at the dyno as in the car.

Well, we found a few things out today. The engine does not like a single emulsion bleed with the Dominator. It looked best with three bleeds, we used .024 in top, .026 in #3 and #4, and was a little better than the .026 in #1 and #3 we started with. Also went back to a .029 air bleed, with less emulsion and air bleed it seemed like we couldn't get it lean enough even with a 128 jet. It seems to like about a 132, and we went from 36˚ to 34˚ timing and picked up a little more. This is an iron head 355, 200cc World Products heads, smaller roller cam with around 255@.050. The Dominator make very little more than the Demon, which is odd because the engine liked the Dominators on gas over an 850, however that was also before the timing change from 39˚ to 36˚, and now 34˚. We are going to test the 850 on E85, and I imagine at some point we need to go back to gas to see the how the carbs run with less timing on gas. And I will be making some timing changes in my car to see how it affects it as well, figure as we lean the carb it may not need as much timing.

So if you couldn't get it lean enough with a 128 jet and not much emulsion, why didnt you just put in a smaller jet? How does the fuel consumption vary with using more air bleed and a larger jet. BSFC's etc and actual fuel LBS per hour stability.

The BSFC with the Demon was around .600 average. Tune was emulsions .024, blank, .024, blank, blank , downleg boosters with .180 passage, #2 taper mainwell with .175 angle channel, .126 jet. Dominator's best pull was emulsions .024, blank, .026, .026, blank, 16 hole .052 annular boosters with .185 booster passage, #3 taper mainwell with .184 angle channel,.132 jet. BSFC was high until the last pulls, still higher than the Demon at somewhere around .630's average I think. Got to go back and look at all the data, but the engine liked being richer on the bottom and leaner up top, average between 4000-7000 was about the same as the Demon but stayed over 500 HP much farther over 7000. I'll try to get copies to post. I did wonder about dropping jet more, may try that later. Never seemed to get it as lean as the Demon O2 readings either.

Ahh, if the demon had leaner O2 readings and more efficient BSFC and used less emulsion and the dominator needed to be richer down low and leaner up top then its likely that the engine was benefiting from atomization and vaporization from the smaller demon. The demon most likely wouldn't make over 500 for as far above 7000 because its too small CFM for that part of the pull but its far more efficient in HP per CFM than the Dominator. What you have to do is get the dominator to match or better the demons atomization. You just tested an example of droplet size effect.